Jeff Gordon: Panini Chronicles Obsidian

I've said this before on here, but I definitely miss Panini being part of the hockey card market. They had some really great stuff for the few years they were around. Dominion and Prizm were some of my favorites. While they probably won't be back in hockey any time soon, I can still chase at least a few of their cards for my Jeff Gordon side project.

Today's post features an awesome new card from 2020-21 Panini Chronicles NASCAR. Specifically, it is an Obsidian card and features an awesome shot of one of Gordon's newer DuPont paint schemes. I had to have this one as soon as I saw it and wasted little time tracking down a copy for myself on eBay a few weeks ago.

The scan does not completely capture the awesomeness of this thing. It's printed on a premium card stock and the foil areas have a nice rainbow effect. The solid black areas look really nice and provide a great contrast for the rest of the design. This is definitely my favorite Gordon card so far. There are even some parallel versions out there.

This card is the perfect example of what this side project is about. I saw this card and immediately knew I wanted a copy of it. I'm not going after every single Gordon card out there, just ones that catch my eye and I think would fit with my vision for the project.

Jeff Gordon: Off and Running, Finally...

Well, this post is definitely a little overdue. My original post about starting a side project for Jeff Gordon cards was all the way back in February. While I was able to get my first cards for the project not long afterward, they've just been sitting in my queue ever since.

I've also spent some time searching through COMC and TCDb to get a feel for what's out there. Gordon does have almost 8,000 different cards listed so I've got plenty to choose from. Since this is just a fun little side project, I'm going to be a little more picky about what I go after. It is not like my Howard collection where I want everything. For Jeff Gordon, I'm just looking for cards that catch my eye.

I'm also not looking to break the bank for these so I'm looking for good deals at the same time. In the case of my first purchase for the project, I was lucky to find a nice mixed lot on eBay that had some cool stuff to get me started. There were 10 different cards in the lot.

We'll get things started with my favorite of the lot, a base card from 2000 Upper Deck Victory Circle. This design is very similar to the 99-00 Upper Deck hockey set.

Up next is another name that I associate with hockey more than anything: SP Authentic. This one is a base card from 1999 SPA. I love the idea of the oval in the design. The DuPont paint scheme stands out very nicely from the rest of the design in this case.

Here is yet another name that I will always associate with hockey: MVP. This is almost an exact copy of the MVP hockey design from 1999-00. The biggest difference is the horizontal orientation of the larger MVP text toward the top of the card.

Now we're getting to some designs that are completely new to me. The only thing familiar to me here is the Upper Deck logo in the corner. This one with some cool blue foil accents comes from the 1999 Upper Deck Road to the Cup set, one I never even heard of.

This next one is from the same set, but has a bit of a different look to it. This one has a more head on look at the car. It also has a cool pop out window with a photo of Gordon outside the car. I'm really liking the look of this bluish foil. Hopefully there is more like this.

Up next is a group of three cards from 2000 Victory Circle. This one has a cool shot of Gordon in what looks to be the winner's circle at the Daytona 500. I'm guessing this would be from the previous year when Gordon won the famous race in 1999.

The next one has a cool shot of Gordon in the middle of a pit stop.

The last of the three has another cool look at Gordon after winning another race. Not sure if it is the same Daytona 500 on the other card though. I really like the overhead angle of this photo. You can even see the Gatorade bottles placed on top of the roof.

This next one is from another set I had never heard of before: 2000 Maxx Racing. This one has a neat effect where the background behind the car is split almost along the middle of the card. The way they did this really makes the car stand out.

Last but not least we have a bit of an outlier with this In the Drivers Seat insert card from 1999 SP Authentic. I say outlier because this is the first of these cards to not feature an overall look at Gordon's car. It is a nice design, just not as cool as the ones with the car.

Now that I've gotten started, I can try to narrow my focus to some of the cards that are actually appealing to me. I was into the whole Gordon/NASCAR thing when I was growing up in the mid 90s, so I'm likely to gravitate toward cards from back then. There is also some overlap with the hockey products I collected as a kid, so those would be the top priority.

One thing I will say is that I tend to prefer the cards that feature the car more than the ones of just Gordon himself. I'll definitely try to get some of both, but as far as priority goes I will probably focus on cards primarily featuring that iconic DuPont paint job from the 90's.

New Side Project: Jeff Gordon

Yes, that Jeff Gordon, the race car driver from NASCAR. Now this might be a bit out of nowhere in terms of what I've been posting on here in the past, but I felt like it was a good time to throw something a little bit different into the mix. Hello racing cards!

 

 

When I was a kid, I was actually really into NASCAR for a few years. Jeff Gordon was my favorite driver and I will always remember those colorful paint jobs on his #24 DuPont cars from the 90's. I had a bunch of t-shirts and toys with those colors plastered all over them.

As far as collecting, in recent years I have diversified a bit and gotten away from exclusively collecting hockey cards. While I will never collect baseball, basketball or football, there are at least a handful of other types of cards I collect now or possibly will in the future.

I've come a long way from simply hoarding low end 90's and 00's hockey. While hockey is still my main focus, I really enjoy some of these oddball side projects like train cards and stuff for some of my favorite shows like Stranger Things, Lost and Jericho. 

I'm also a big believer in the "collect what you want and ignore what everyone else thinks" approach. Nobody is going to tell me what I should or shouldn't collect. I do this as a hobby for fun so I'm going to do it in a way that makes it enjoyable for me.

Back to the focus of this post, I've always been aware of NASCAR cards from reading other blogs (specifically Cardboard History) and what not, but I know next to nothing about them. After some initial searching on eBay and COMC, Gordon has a ton of cards out there. Since I'm treating this as a fun mini-PC project, I'm going after just the ones I like.

Here are some example of what's out there.

Honestly, I wasn't even aware that Upper Deck made NASCAR cards in the late 90's and early 2000's. There is even some overlap with the hockey designs from back then, so that's a neat tie in with my current collection. I'll probably gravitate toward those types of cards.

A quick check of the Trading Card Database shows Gordon has over 7,000 different cards out there. A lot more than I was thinking. I guess the good thing about that is I should easily be able to find a bunch of low end stuff that I actually like for this new side project.

So we'll see where this goes. I'm not making it my top priority or anything, but it will be fun to have another type of card to go after. Anyone else a NASCAR card collector?